The Alchemist's Daughter (7 page)

His reflection nodded. And now I couldn’t stop. I wasn’t used to an audience and thought my only chance of keeping his interest was to impress him with what I knew. So I spilled out information on common air, elasticated air, geometry, and mathematics. The only subject I daren’t mention, of course, was alchemy.

We walked on along the mossy terraces up to the jungle of the rose garden. I was enchanted by a new, double consciousness: Emilie, the watcher of Emilie, the girl in the midst of this extraordinary experience. There was Aislabie, the incarnation of an impossible dream, and here was Emilie, so excited she must be physically shining, like phosphorus. My Selden world was utterly transformed. The neglected garden was now full of beautiful secrets: a stone bench hiding behind a shower of full-blown roses and a tangle of briars wrapped round the throat of a lichened dryad.

I was much too shy to ask Aislabie about himself. He was a novelty, from the fine cloth of his coat to the texture of his wig. I saw him as a perfect equation, like Kepler’s third law of celestial harmony, which states the proportion between the time taken for a planet to orbit the sun and its distance from the sun. He stayed for an hour, and then we walked back to fetch his horse from the woods. “So, Mistress Emilie, we have established that the phlogiston theory won’t save my cargoes or my pocket, but what have you offered instead? A blank.” The touch of his lips on my hand connected disturbingly to nerves in my breasts; the heat of his breath and the way he smelled of flowers and evergreen made my thighs ache. My hand stayed in his.

“I can warn you not to ventilate your precious cargo too much, because one thing we do know is that fire loves the air and won’t burn in a vacuum,” I said.

“Thank you. But of course I must have some ventilation in my hold or the rot will set in. Anything else?”

I shook my head, dumb with misery. He was slipping away from me.

He kissed my hand again, and while his head was dipped I risked a proper look along the slope of his back, but he glanced up and caught my eye. “Mistress Emilie. I may stay just a little while longer in Buckinghamshire. If I do, would I perhaps find you again some day in this wood?”

“You might.”

“Would you mind?”

I shook my head. He nodded thoughtfully, gave a deep bow, untied his chestnut horse, and led it away. His stride was easy, his hips narrow, his shoulders straight and strong. This time he wasn’t in a hurry, and where the track bent he turned and waved. My heart swayed on the palm of his hand.

[ 10 ]

I
NEVER KNEW
when he would come or what mood he’d be in. Sometimes he was lighthearted, offered his arm, and teased me; sometimes he was distant and clasped his hands behind his back. He talked of places, politicians, writers, countries, clubs, sports I’d never heard of, and my total ignorance of the world was laid bare. After he left, I spent the evening foraging through our library. An ancient map of London taught me to place Lambeth, Southwark, Vauxhall, Leadenhall, and Ludgate, but it couldn’t help me with Lloyd’s or Jonathan’s, with Addison, Gay, Defoe, Pope, Walpole, Whigs and Tories. Before I met Aislabie, I thought I knew almost everything. After a couple of hours in his company, I found I knew next to nothing.

And what I was most ignorant about was myself. I knew the Emilie who had lived at Selden for nineteen years with her father, but I had no knowledge of this person who woke each morning with throbbing wrists and beating heart because she wanted more, more, more of Aislabie. He changed my image of myself. On the day I told him about my French mother, he put his hand under my chin and said, “Yes, that accounts for it. I have never in my life seen eyes like yours. I lie in bed at night wondering how anything so black could be so bright.”

I stored up the wonderful thought that at the same time I was awake thinking of him, he thought of me. “My mother died on the day I was born. Her window was on the second floor—there, four from the end.” I pointed to the most ancient part of the house, gray stone with crooked windows. And suddenly, for the first time in my life, I felt pitiable. Under the molten gaze of his blue eyes, I felt that I should have a mother.

“Tell me about her,” he said.

“I wish I could. All I know is that she was French and that her family were silk weavers.”

“Their name?”

“De Lery.”

He shook his head. “Don’t know of them.”

Another locked door swung wide open. Was it possible that this man could knit his brow, run through a few names, and come that close to knowing my mother’s family? “How would you know them?”

He laughed. “I’ve dabbled in silk in my time. Most merchants do, but it’s a cutthroat old world.”

“There is a dye named after my mother’s family called De Lery green.”

He shrugged. “Perhaps there’s family left.”

“I doubt it. Mrs. Gill says there was a fire in my grandfather’s house, and after that the family went back to France. I never met any of them.”

“Which part of France?”

“I don’t know.”

“Maybe Paris. Beautiful city. You’d like it. You should go looking for your mother’s family. You never know, they might have flourished.”

“I’ve never even been to London.”

“You shall. You shall go to London. You’d take London by storm. You are so different. People are quickly bored in London. You’d amaze them.” He kissed each fingertip except for the little finger, which he held between his lips and caressed with his tongue, thereby doing astonishing things to my insides. “My motherless girl. My sleeping beauty.”

[ 11 ]

W
HEN
I
RETURNED
to the house, I found an unexpected and not very welcome visitor in the entrance hall. Reverend Shales was hanging about by a window with the air of one who had been there a long time. He had removed his coat and wig, revealing a head of cropped, curling hair. He hastily replaced the wig but not the coat, then bowed. “I hope you’re well, Mistress Selden.”

I had intended to lie on my bed and suck Aislabie’s hot kisses from my fingers. Instead I stood at another window and smiled dazedly at Shales, who seemed very austere in his plain waistcoat. It was months since I’d seen him. The heat had glazed his skin, and he was less gaunt than I remembered.

“I’m aware that your father is away and wondered if you were lonely. Perhaps I could encourage you to come to church,” he said.

I nearly laughed. “It’s a kind thought, Reverend Shales, but I’m not lonely.”

He shot me a surprisingly keen look. “There are few in Selden who share my love of natural philosophy. I should like to discuss my research with you and especially explore the issue of combustion. Everywhere I go in the parishes, I hear of your reputation for learning. I have been prevented from calling by my sense that it might be disloyal to your father, in view of his quarrel with me. What do you think?”

This time I did laugh. “I think you’re right.”

There was a long silence, during which he pressed his lips together and stared out of the window. On our previous encounters, he had not seemed unsure of himself, and his struggle to find words was unsettling. I was struck by how crowded my life had become, what with Aislabie in the garden and Shales in the entrance hall.

Shales suddenly slapped the wall and plucked his hat off a nearby chair. “Mistress Selden, I wish I knew you better. If I did you might do me the honor of listening to me.”

“I am listening to you, Reverend Shales.”

“There is word in the village that you have been receiving a visitor. Indeed, I have seen this visitor myself and tried to speak with him, but he had urgent business elsewhere so our conversation was brief and unproductive. I beg you to be careful.” I was speechless but in any case he hadn’t finished. “At least wait for your father to come back before you commit yourself to some irreversible step.”

“I have no intention of committing myself to an irreversible step.”

“Of course. No. But sometimes it is hard to see the danger. People can be very persuasive.”

“I think you forget who I am, Reverend Shales. I am not some stupid village girl.”

He nodded several times, turned his hat in his hands, and gave me another searching glance. “Of course. Well, thank you for hearing me.”

I folded my arms and waited for him to leave, but he only got as far as the door before turning back. We stared at each other, and I was disconcerted by the contrast between this man and Aislabie, and understood that Shales would not have come in defiance of my father unless strongly provoked. He seemed trustworthy—there was an urgency about him, a clarity in his eye that was hard to doubt—whereas Aislabie was all light and shade, quirky, mischievous, unpredictable.

Shales said, “I think your father would forgive us if we were to read a book or two together. I’m sure we could make great progress. You, after all, are an authority on fire, and my book is about air. And we could keep away from the thorny subject of alchemy.”

“The trouble is, Reverend Shales, I think as my father does about alchemy. How could I talk to you if I knew that secretly you were disapproving of me and despising me for the work I do with my father?”

“Despise? No.”

“Nevertheless.”

The entrance hall was a large low room, unfurnished except for some ancient chairs, the Bosworth armor, a few pictures, and the oak staircase. Dusty sunlight fell on the scratched and tarnished boards. Shales suddenly came across and took my hand, the same hand that had been caressed so ardently by Aislabie a few moments before, and touched it briefly with his lips. “I beg you to take care of yourself, Mistress Selden.”

“Thank you, Reverend Shales, be sure I shall.” And then he did go at last, although he turned back at the door, and I had a last glimpse of his troubled face. I watched him from the window as he crossed the lawn and let himself out, clanging the side gate shut behind him. I understood that he was informing the village that
his
visit, at least, was not clandestine.

I paced from window to window and wished he’d never come to spoil the enchantment of my afternoon with Aislabie. He was ridiculously tall and prim. And how dare he listen to gossip? But there was a part of me that was flattered, and just for a moment I imagined discussing the nature of fire with a fellow of the Royal Society other than my father. Then I remembered how Aislabie had kissed my fingertips, and I ran up to my chamber, lay on my bed, and relived climbing the terrace steps at his side, my arm resting on his and my fingers interlaced in his warm hand.

[ 12 ]

S
ELDEN WAS LOOSENING
its grip on me. I never went near the laboratory anymore because I was too busy throwing open all the lattices that weren’t sealed up with damp, and bringing armfuls of flowers and branches into the house. I saw them now not as specimens but as part of a shifting green and gold world I shared with Aislabie. The time he wasn’t there was full of longing and excitement. Where would he touch me next? Once, while asking the name of a little bird, he stood behind me and laid his hand on the back of my neck as if to support himself. My knees buckled. His thumb moved an inch upward and a thread tugged at my stomach and vagina and went on tugging long after he had gone. My body, it seemed, had functions and responses that were not covered by Vesalius or any other author in our library.

I understood that this was love. My father had used Homer to teach me Greek, so even I knew that it was natural for a woman to yearn for a man. And alchemical literature is full of couplings. One of my favorite books, the
Mutus Liber
, or
Wordless Book
, shows fifteen figures, among them a man and woman working together at their alchemy. In one picture, the man clutches a child to his bosom; in the last, they join hands in joy of the completed work. I thought about my extraordinary transformation and decided that I was ready to be part of a pair. I was half of Aislabie now, incomplete unless we were together.

On his fifth visit, I led him to the orchard, where I wanted to show him the glass-sided beehive Gill had built under my father’s instruction. “We think the bees have a different signal to show whether food is far or near,” I said. “And bees observe geometrical patterns, because they move in circles and semicircles.”

Aislabie pretended to be nervous of the bees, so we sat under a distant apple tree. As I lay back on my elbows and looked up at the bubbles of apples and the burning sky, I thought my desire for him would come gushing out and drown us both, so to hide my longing I started talking again. “When Isaac Newton stared at the sun through a glass, he blinded himself for months afterward.”

“What a lot you know about Newton.” He leaned on one elbow and smiled into my eyes. His full-lipped mouth fascinated me because it was so pliant—it could smile or frown or tease with the merest twitch of a muscle.

“The image of the sun was scorched into his retina, but even from his pain he made deductions. He studied the image within his head and noted that there are spots in the sun.” Aislabie brought my hand to his lips, kissed each knuckle, and played the tip of his tongue across the scar from when I first opened the door to him. My throat went slack, but I babbled on. “Newton even pressed a bodkin between his eyeball and the socket in order to distort his vision and understand the play of light on the retina . . .”

He untied my hat and pushed it off, pulled out the pink ribbon, and wound his hand through my hair. Then he kissed my mouth. “Emilie. Silence, Emilie.”

I had barely been kissed in all my nineteen years except for dry little pecks on the cheek or hand from my father and the occasional bosomy hug from Mrs. Gill, so I was entranced by what that kiss did to me and thought it the loveliest thing I knew to have my mouth fastened to his. When our tongues touched, my knees fell apart, and I thought, Why have I been wasting my time all these years not being kissed?

The kiss, which went on and on, unhinged me. I started to cry and shrank away in shame, but Aislabie seemed not to mind. Instead, he gathered me into his lap and sat with his back to the tree, stroking my cheek and shoulder, kissing the tears, pressing his mouth to my neck, and whispering, “My Emilie. Emilie.” I clung to his neck and kissed him harder.